Omar uproar swamps Pelosi

With the fallout over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s controversial comments paralyzing House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi found herself on the floor Wednesday afternoon asking some of her closest allies what exactly she should do.

For 20 minutes, Pelosi huddled with senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus — House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and Karen Bass and Barbara Lee of California — to try to determine what kind of resolution the CBC would back that rejected Omar’s remarks about Israel without unfairly singling her out.

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It’s a balance that Pelosi and her deputies initially failed to reach when a draft resolution began circulating Monday night.

And it’s a surprising scenario for the veteran Democratic leader, who has long prided herself on an intrinsic understanding of her caucus but who now finds herself struggling to clean up the latest political mess created by a high-profile member of the freshman class.

“These are just the growing pains of our coming into our own as a majority. And Speaker Pelosi is the one who has to try to put it all together and govern day to day,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). “It’s not easy. But people have lost a lot of money betting against Nancy Pelosi before.”

Still, the episode clearly brings to an end a string of major wins for Pelosi, who seemed almost politically untouchable after she dispatched a pack of rebels to regain the speakership and then held her caucus together for weeks as she defeated Donald Trump and his border wall demands during the longest shutdown in history.

Now the California Democrat is staring down a new crisis — how to police one of her own after a series of comments that some Democrats say are anti-Semitic — and there’s no easy solution.

Pelosi called an emergency meeting Wednesday night with senior lawmakers on both sides of the debate to try to resolve their differences, though the meeting ended without a final decision on the resolution.

If Pelosi comes down too hard on Omar, she risks alienating progressive lawmakers and outside groups that have rallied to the Minnesota Democrat’s side. If she pulls her punches, Pelosi will anger Jewish lawmakers and groups outraged over Omar’s latest remark about pro-Israel advocates’ “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Pelosi and her leadership team have struggled to contain the furor from all corners of the caucus and have seemingly stumbled in recent days over how to respond. At first, Democrats planned to take quick action and pass a resolution on the matter on Wednesday. Amid stiff resistance from the left, they reversed course.

Now it‘s unclear when the House will hold a vote, as the party’s factions continue to maneuver against each other.

On one side of the argument is a bloc of senior Jewish lawmakers, some of them leaders of powerful House committees, who have demanded Omar apologize for her remarks and be subject to some form of public punishment. Some of those lawmakers wanted the resolution to mention Omar by name and were angered when Democratic leaders decided that would go too far.

On the other side is an equally powerful group of black and progressive Democrats who have rallied to Omar’s defense, arguing that she is being unfairly singled out and shouldn’t be punished at all. Some of those members, including in the Congressional Black Caucus, don’t want to see a resolution on the floor.

In the middle is Pelosi.

As the leader of the Democratic Caucus for the past 16 years, Pelosi has long taken a dual approach to soothing tensions within the caucus — sometimes using honey, sometimes vinegar, but almost always getting her way in the end. Now, in her second go-round as speaker, she’s being tested by a caucus that is more diverse, restive and outspoken than ever before.

“I know that it looks different or feels different to people, but I didn’t come here to just sit quietly and fall in line,” said freshman Rep. Jahana Hayes, one of several members who criticized leadership’s strategy during a tense closed-door meeting Wednesday morning. “I don’t mean that to be disrespectful.”

Over the past 48 hours, House Democrats have moved into damage control mode after being forced to scrap plans for an otherwise uncontroversial measure: a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism.

In a caucus meeting Wednesday, Democrats discussed broadening the measure to condemn all hate speech. Supporters of the idea said it would let the party reject the recent rise of anti-Muslim attacks; a poster at a West Virginia GOP event last week appeared to link Omar, one of the first Muslims to serve in Congress, to the Sept. 11 attacks.

From the start of the conversations, Pelosi has been pushing for a broader resolution that doesn’t specifically name Omar, according to an aide to the speaker. Pelosi also made a point of speaking to Omar on Sunday night about the resolution before making any decisions.

The task of rewriting the resolution has now fallen to House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, the first Democrat to publicly rip Omar’s latest remark.

“I wouldn’t say it was finalized, but I would say we’re moving closer,” Engel said leaving the emergency meeting in Pelosi's office Wednesday night. He said text would probably be released Thursday but declined to provide specifics.

If the House doesn’t vote on the measure soon, some Democrats fear they could step on their own messaging as they bring their signature legislative proposal — a package of campaign finance and ethics reforms central to their 2018 midterm campaign — to the floor on Friday.

The final version of the resolution is unlikely to win unanimous support from the caucus.

Members of the CBC left a meeting Wednesday largely united that there should not be a resolution at all, arguing it would unfairly target Omar at a time when she has also been the subject of hate speech.

Democratic sources said some Jewish lawmakers, including Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), were upset by leadership’s decision to expand the resolution to address all kinds of hate speech, which they felt watered down the repudiation of Omar’s comments.

“We were just having a good discussion about the need for a powerful statement condemning anti-Semitism,” Florida Rep. Ted Deutch said. “That’s really all I’m focused on.” | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

Leaving Pelosi’s office Wednesday night, Deutch would say little other than he’s focused on making the resolution as strong as possible.

“We were just having a good discussion about the need for a powerful statement condemning anti-Semitism,” he told POLITICO. “That’s really all I’m focused on.”

Another person involved in the talks who prefers a resolution focused mostly on anti-Semitism said, “If Democrats try to sweep this up the rug, we’re going to have a problem.”

Democratic leaders have struggled to control the narrative publicly, instructing lawmakers to train their attention on their legislative priorities, such as the campaign finance bill, H.R. 1, on the floor this week.

Pelosi and her deputies have also faced a backlash from their rank and file, with lawmakers complaining they felt blindsided as the resolution was crafted and released without a single caucuswide email or conference call.

Plans for a resolution had been in the works since early Friday, with some members privately demanding Democratic leaders take action. A draft of the four-page anti-Semitism resolution began circulating Monday night. But even then, lawmakers complained it wasn’t clear who had written it.

Even Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, hadn’t been made aware of the specific details of the resolution until Monday, he told fellow members of the CBC on Wednesday, according to a source in the room.

Part of the challenge, other lawmakers say, is that a new generation of Democrats has arrived in Washington that eschews the top-down style of leadership that has defined House politics for decades.

Within this raucous caucus of outspoken freshman, some came to Congress equipped with millions of social media followers and spotlights nearly as bright as Pelosi’s.

Freshman superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted out a string of tweets to her more than 3 million followers earlier this week that described in detail what she saw as Democratic leadership’s hypocrisy in reprimanding Omar while not speaking out on other types of hate speech.

Omar herself has responded largely through Twitter, declining to comment to reporters in the Capitol but raising eyebrows as she tweeted back at a senior lawmaker, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), who had criticized her comments.

The approach couldn’t be more different than that of prior years, long-serving Democrats say.

“I was told to be a potted plant when I got here,” said six-term Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon. “It is a different time. New members are not willing to sit back.”

“A lot of it has to do with the technology and the ability for everybody to have a microphone now,” added Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio.)

“You’re seeing a generation come in that has a lot of familiarity with that, has grown up with that, is very comfortable with that and so it’s a natural extension of who they are,” Ryan said. “It’s a new power dynamic.”